Officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday in honor of the new Tyler Junior College nursing programs in Jacksonville..
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Creation of the program, which will be conducted at East Texas Medical Center-Jacksonville, was announced in May as a nearly $600,000 partnership between ETMC, TJC, Jacksonville Economic Development Corp. and Trinity Mother Frances Hospitals and Clinics.
L. Michael Metke, president of TJC, said he was impressed by how quickly arrangements were made at ETMC-Jacksonville in preparation for the nursing program.
“It’s been amazing how everybody worked together to get it all set up. What you see here — I guess they make it all look easy, but it was a lot of work,” Metke said.
Indeed, 4,500 square feet and 19 rooms were renovated at ETMC in less than two months to make way for classrooms, clinics, labs and offices. JEDCO provided $360,000 — including $240,000 up front — to pay for the renovation. Darrell Prcin, president of JEDCO, said the Jacksonville and Cherokee County economies will quickly feel the impact of the partnership.
“Economically, once the graduating class a year from now starts moving out into the work places, it’s about $1.5 million or so in salaries,” Prcin said. “Take that and extend it out to five years, you’re looking at about $15 million or so dollars and it continues to go from there.”
Classes began Aug. 25 in the licensed vocational nurse program with 20 students, 18 of whom are from Cherokee County. The program has three nurse instructors and eight teachers total, leading nursing and pre-requisite courses. Trinity Mother Frances contributed $225,000 to the program, much of which will go toward paying qualified teachers. Metke said TJC wouldn’t have had the faculty to start the program were it not for Mother Frances.
“One of the biggest hurdles in trying to start a program is finding teachers,” Metke said. “They have to have a master’s degree in nursing and we were already short five nurses (in Tyler). We were looking to cut back our program in Tyler, much less come here. Mother Frances was a big help in providing funds to hire teachers.”
In addition to the LVN program at ETMC-Jacksonville, TJC will also offer an associate degree nursing transitions program, which will help LVNs earn the credentials to become registered nurses. The ADN program is slated to begin Oct. 20. Twenty students are already enrolled in that program.
Jack Endres, administrator at ETMC, said he was proud his organization could provide a venue for the nursing program. TJC previously ran a program in Jacksonville at First Baptist Church that was discontinued because of funding and infrastructure concerns.
“It’s so rare that you have an opportunity to bring a school back to life,” Endres said. “They wound up leaving Jacksonville because of the space issues. Everybody wanted to bring that school back.”
Even though the new programs have been launched successfully by most counts, there are still improvements to be made, said Paul Monagan, dean of Allied Health and Nursing at TJC.
“My next goal is to make sure our general-ed. pre-requisite courses for nursing fill up better. We didn’t have too much time to advertise,” he said. “When we started the introduction to psychology course... we don’t have a lot of students in that class. Yet, there are probably a lot of students who need that class in order to get into nursing.”
But, Metke said, the program certainly has a great deal of potential.
“We’ll have to make sure that this program is solid and that we can sustain it. But, I expect it to grow. There’s a huge demand” he said.
“I would certainly think there’s a potential to double what we’re doing here.”
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